Operation Death Rain
Operation Death Rain was the first coordinated operation of the Messier War and allegably the first operation of the war. It searched for the destruction of part of the Garrison Fleet stationed at Riesco Island, by using surprise in all terms. Concept Surprise was the main weapon West Patagonia had. However, a full attack risked having no effects and leaving West Patagonia undefended from a close by invading force. The destruction of the Garrison Fleet was a first tier objective for the Armed Forces. It´s survival would mean the destruction of Wets Patagonia in the long term. The use of surprise for this objective would have to be perfect. Riesco was a fortress island south of West Patagonia. There are no nearby bases and an aproach would be too slow to surprise the enemy. The idea came from Corporate Andanael Flint, when, he said, managed to beat a friend in a shooting exercice from above, by making the lesser noise. The idea was to use the recent and small west patagonian fleet to hold bombers, that would use the unexpected location, speed and precission to destroy many targets. The operation was perfected and eventually, the bombers were lifted to space. The Gm Bf 46 is equiped with enough over-space capabilities to do so. While in low orbit, the planes entered the docks of the AEPO ships, the 27th of November. The next days were used for preparations, pilots trained the 6SS usage for the strike, and for the election of the proper weapons. Preparations After the first transport, 47 pilots were preselected for the strike. All of them trained in a constant 16 hours a day program and knew the selected pilots the 1st of december. By the 28th, the missile Corvo Pintados Occidental 2.0, equiped with high penetration heads and also able to reach high speed (it was just require that the missile resisted such speed and was linked to the 6SS onboard. Execution The Operation started at 5 am with the opening of the docks. The planes were launched at 640 kms of altitude and gained 1800 kms/hr on the dive. The fighter squads were four of six fighters each (totally atipycal for FAPO organization standards). They reported anti-air meassure against them at 10000 metres high. After the first maneuvers of dodge, the opened fire. The missiles passed by the secondary targets and hitted the designated ones, acording to the pilots, already taking off. 42 ships were reported damaged and 9 were accounted as destroyed, later coroborated by the intelligence systems. After the descent, the fighters encountered heavy resistance and engaged in dogfight above Riesco. In the battle, runways and hangars were also destroyed by guided bombs. Results and effects As a whole, the half of the Gf Bm 46 were taken down, with all pilots dead. 42 of the 497 space ships were destroyed. They were qualified as middle and heavilly sized. 9 were later accounted as "damaged beyond reparations" due to explotions. The later dogfight caused 69 Kembra fighter to be taken down, specially after the last hour of fight. "We took the advantage, as we saw that there were no fighters on the air. We dived, possitioned behind the Kembra that had just taken off, and opened fire with the machine guns, after a second of impacts, the hull collapsed and burned."---Lt. Miguel Hernandez. Secondary objectives included runways and hangars, 25 impacts were accounted against ground objectives. "I hovered the ground, at about 500 metres away, and saw the planes, so I told Fernando that we had to destroy them on ground. We left the bombs loose and say the ball of fire that invaded the runway."---Lt. Nicanor "Yurem" Paredes. However, the greatest effect was the intel gathered by the FAPO due to the battle. The PAC´s systems did the greatest damages to the planes that finally forced the withdraw, using the mountains. "They showed us another issue, the land artillery. Too strong and well protected, and worse of all, it would not leave."--- Luis Marcaez, Master of Wings and Master in Comand of the FAPO. After the battle, the rest of the fleet managed to go on orbit. Also, the usage of the PAC´s showed the location of mosts. On later operations, part of these were destroyed and more operations are declared to be planned in the future.